The Ellison connection

Yesterday I noted the Islamist connection to the rise of Minnesota Fifth District Rep. Keith Ellison in 2006. Ellison found timely support among Hamas and friends. I thought that the Hamas-related support for Ellison was indicative of the melding of the left with Islamist forces at home and abroad. It is an alliance that Ellison embodies. The key man in the picture was Nihad Awad, executive director of CAIR.

Democratic leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi headlined a high-dollar fundraiser in May that was attended by U.S.-based Islamist groups and individuals linked by the U.S. government to the Hamas jihad group and to the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood movement.

The donors at the undisclosed May 16 event included Nihad Awad, the co-founder of the Council on American Islamic Relations, according to data provided by the nonpartisan Investigative Project on Terrorism.

The CAIR group was named an unindicted conspirator in a 2007 trial of a Hamas money-smuggling group.

A covertly-taken photograph provided by the IPT shows Pelosi standing near Awad at the fundraiser. Roughly 30 people attended the fundraiser, according to the IPT.

The cheapest tickets cost $5,000, and the most expensive were $30,800 per couple, according to the event invite from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which used the cash to fund Democratic candidates. (View the invite here)

The hosts of the event were DCCC chairman Rep. Steve Israel and two Muslim representatives, Rep. Keith Ellison and Rep. Andre Carson.

Ellison is the DCCC’s “national community outreach chair” and the co-chair of the House progressive caucus.

Munro adds: “On Oct. 29, The Daily Caller asked Ellison’s press aide if the congressman would decline donations from Islamist groups. The aide replied that Ellison was not available to comment.”

Ellison has been a national figure for six years, famous as the first Muslim elected to Congress. He resides at the far left of the Democratic Party. He nevertheless ardently advocates the Democratic Party’s positions on gay rights, abortion, and feminism. To this day we have yet to learn which branch of Islam comports with his position on these issues. (Last year I posed a set of faith questions for Ellison.) But I digress.

The Islamist connection to the DCCC raises a different question. What is the common ground on which radical Islamists such as Awad and his Democratic friends stand? What is it about the Democrats that attracts the likes of Awad?

Emerson and Rossomando have more on the May DCCC fundraiser:

Speaking to the attendees in her 10-minute address, [Pelosi] said the Democratic Party should become the natural home of Muslim-Americans, because Republicans a[re] fanning the flames of “Islamophobia.” She focused exclusively on Islamophobia, a term devised by radical Islamists and their apologists to silence critics, while avoiding any mention of terrorism carried out by Islamists in the United States.

Also speaking were Israel, Ellison, Carson, and Reps Alyson Schwartz, D-Pa., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn. Israel and Murphy were said to have been the most vehement among the members of Congress in attendance in terms of their incendiary accusations of Republican-incited Islamophobia. One observer said that it was striking that “there was not a scintilla of comments in defense of U.S. national security.” However, they welcomed each of the Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood front groups represented at the event into the “Democratic community” without any mention of their well-documented terror links.

What is it that unites Pelosi et al. and the Islamist front groups that support the Democrats? It must be an Islamophobic question that would elicit an Islamophobic answer.